Intel Expects Moorestown To Compete In Smartphone Space Early Next Year

NVIDIA has Tegra, ARM has the Cortex line, and Qualcomm has the
Snapdragon family. These are the major players in the smartphone CPU war
right now, and there seems to be plenty of options to go around. But of
course, as a microprocessor company, Intel isn't going to just sit
around on the sidelines while everyone else wins business in a growing
category. The Atom platform is being tweaked and expanded to include
Moorestown, which is a new low-drain arm of Atom that will work nicely
in MIDs, smartphones and even tablet PCs.

But it's going to be quite some time before Intel's ready to compete in
the space. During the Computex show this week, the company stated that
they wouldn't be ready to ship a Moorestown-based smartphone before
early 2011, with tablets and slates to get the platform "first." We
aren't too surprised at the notion; shipping first in a tablet, which
has less strict power and heat requirements due to the larger size,
makes sense, and it will give Intel time to work out the problems with
thermals.

But what will the smartphone landscape look like in 7-8 months? Another
CPU will enter the fold (the A4 CPU expected in Apple's next generation
iPhone), and we're certain that Qualcomm's dual-core 1.2GHz chip will be
toasting benchmarks everywhere. Does the world really have room for
another smartphone chip? According to Intel, yes. Moorestown is shaping
up to be the most powerful smartphone platform yet, with the ability to
truly multi-task, play back 1080p video and even handle games like World
of Warcraft right on your phone. Of course, we will have to wait until a
product ships before blows are thrown, but next year's smartphone wars
are bound to be exciting. We're guessing a MeeGo phone (or a Moblin
phone) will be first to test Moorestown, but who knows--maybe Android
will make a surprise appearance.